During the French Revolution (1789–1799), Robespierre's informant networks denounced traitors to the new republic, and tracked down refugee aristocrats and clergy for trial and execution. The wide application of treason laws and charges (known as "the terror") gives rise to the modern use of the term terrorism.

1800–1849

c.1800:

Colonial rulers and powers employ secret police and agents of espionage throughout their territorial holdings, hoping to quell anti-colonial rebellions and separatist movements.

1823:

Monroe Doctrine declares Western Hemisphere a U.S. "sphere of influence".

1839:

First Opium War begins between Britain and China. The conflict lasts until 1842. Imperial Chinese commissioner Lin Tse-Hsu seizes or destroys vast amounts of opium, including stocks owned by British traders. The result was a Chinese payment of an indemnity of more than twenty-one million silver dollars and Hong Kong being ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Nanking.

1845:

Christian Friedrich Schönbein (1799–1868), German-Swiss chemist, prepares guncotton. He discovers that a certain acid mixture combines with the cellulose in cotton to produce an explosive that burns without smoke or residue.

1846:

Ascanio Sobrero (1812–1888), Italian chemist, slowly adds glycerin to a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids and first produces nitroglycerine. He is so impressed by the explosive potential of a single drop in a heated test tube and so fearful of its use in war that he makes no attempt to exploit it. It is another twenty years before Alfred Bernhard Nobel learns the proper formula and puts it to use.

1848:

Unites States Congress passes Drug Importation Act that allows United States Customs Service inspection to stop entry of foreign drugs.

1850–1899

1856:

Second Opium War begins between Britain and China. The conflict lasts until 1860. Also known as the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French War in China, the war broke out after a British-flagged ship, the Arrow, is impounded by China. France joins Britain in the war after the murder of a French missionary. China is again defeated, resulting in another large indemnity and the legalization of opium under the Treaty of Tientsin.

1858:

A group of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), forms another revolutionary group, the Fenian Brotherhood with the goal of freeing Ireland from British rule.

1861:

U.S. Civil War (1861–1865).

1861:

President-elect Lincoln arrives secretly in Washington to foil assassination plot brewing in Baltimore.

1864:

First Geneva Convention addresses "the amelioration of the condition of the wounded on the field of battle," resulting in principles for protecting noncombatant personnel caring for the wounded. The Convention also establishes the International Red Cross.

1865:

President Abraham Lincoln is shot in Washington, D.C., by John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln dies the next day; Andrew Johnson assumes the Presidency.

1865:

Molly Maguires, a secret society of Irish miners, attacked coal-mine operators and owners for mistreatment of workers.

1867:

Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833–1896), Swedish inventor, invents dynamite, a safer and more controllable version of nitroglycerine. He combines nitroglycerine with "kieselguhr," or earth containing silica, and discovers that it could not be exploded without a detonating cap.

1870:

Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet showes the importance of statistical analysis for biologists and provides the foundations of biometry.

1870:

Congress creates Department of Justice.

1876:

Robert Koch publishes a paper on anthrax that implicates a bacterium as the cause of the disease, validating the germ theory of disease.

1877:

Congress passes legislation prohibiting the counterfeiting of any coin, gold, or silver bar.

1878:

Charles–Emanuel Sedillot introduces the term "microbe." The term becomes widely used as a term for a pathogenic bacterium.

1878:

In a backlash against twelve years of martial law in the southern United States, Congress passes the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the military from enforcing domestic law.

1881:

President James A. Garfield is shot on July 2, 1881, in Washington, DC, by anarchist Charles J. Guiteau. Garfield dies September 19, 1881; Chester A. Arthur assumes the Presidency.

1883:

Hiram S. Maxim invents the machine gun.

1894:

U.S. Secret Service begins part-time protection of U.S. President Grover Cleveland.

1898:

Spanish-American War.

1899:

First Hague Conference establishes international laws of conduct in warfare.

1900–1949

1901:

President William McKinley is assassinated by anarchist Leon Czolgosz.

1901:

U.S. acquires rights from Cuba to use Guantanamo Bay indefinitely as a naval base.

1901:

Henry Classification System was devised for fingerprint analysis by Sir Edward Henry.

1904:

Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine asserts that the United States has the right to assume the defacto role of an international police power.

1905:

Bloody Sunday incident in Russia. Czarist troops fire on marchers in St. Petersburg.

1905:

Sinn Fein political movement for Irish independence is founded.

1907:

Second Hague Conference establishes further international laws of conduct in warfare, with a focus on war in a maritime environment.

1908:

Large deposits of petroleum are discovered in Middle East.

1908:

Formal beginning of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) that became the FBI in 1935.

1912:

U.S. Marines invade Honduras, Cuba, and Nicaragua to protect American interests. U.S. troops will remain in Nicaragua until 1930s.

1912:

Theodore Roosevelt (ex-president of U.S.) escapes assassination, although shot on October 14, 1912, in Milwaukee while campaigning for president.

1913:

U.S. troops assist in pursuit of Mexican rebel leader Francisco Pancho Villa in Northern Mexico.

1914:

The assassination of Austrian Archduke Francis (Franz) Ferdinand precipitates start of World War I.

1915:

Germany uses poison gas at the Battle of Ypres.

1915:

A U-boat sinks the passenger ship S.S. Lusitania, a passenger ship also carrying military supplies for Britain.

1916:

The Black Tom explosion was the peak act of German sabotage on American soil during the First World War. On July 29, 1916, German agents set fire to a complex of warehouses and ships in the New York harbor that held munitions, fuel, and explosives bound to aid the Allies in their fight. Though America was technically a neutral nation at the time of the attack, their general policies greatly favored the Allies. The attack persuaded many that the United States should join the Allies and intervene in the war in Europe.

1916:

The Home Section of the British Secret Service Bureau becomes MI5, or the Security Service.

1916:

Mexican guerrilla leader Pancho Villa conducts a raid on Columbus, New Mexico, killing seventeen Americans.

1917:

British issue declaration calling for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1917:

Tsarist Russia's February Revolution (based upon the calendar used in Russia at the time, but March in the West) began with rioting and strikes in St. Petersburg. Alexander Kerensky ultimately assumes control of democratic socialist Provisional government, exposes undercover agents of the Okhrana.

1917:

U.S. declares war on Germany.

1917:

The U.S. Army creates the Cipher Bureau within the Military Intelligence Division.

1917:

United States Congress passes the Espionage Act, criminalizing the disclosure of military, industrial, or government secrets related to national security. The act also prohibits anti-war activism and refusal of conscription, sparking controversy.

1917:

V.I. Lenin returns from exile to Russia following Romanov abdication of the Russian throne. Lenin leads a Bolshevik revolution in November.

1918:

Bolsheviks execute former Czar and his family.

1918:

Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates and World War I ends in Europe after twenty million casualties and six million deaths.

1918:

Sedition Act of 1918 amends Espionage and Sedition Acts to broaden the arrest powers granted to federal agents in apprehending and detaining individuals suspected of treason or antiwar activity.

1918:

An influenza epidemic spreads across Asia and war-ravaged Europe to the Americas. The epidemic eventually kills twenty million people, including 500,000 Americans.

1919:

U.S. fears increased after anarchist groups targeted several government and business leaders with bombs in April and May of 1919, a terrorist wave culminates in a series of bombings in eight American cities on June 2, 1919. Under the orders of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, federal agents begin round up of suspected communists and anarchists in November 1919. The Palmer Raids, as they became known, last until March, 1920, and result in the arrest of 6,000 suspects.

1919:

Anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman are deported by the U.S. to Russia.

1920:

Bolshevist or anarchist terrorists are accused of September 16 bombing on Wall Street in New York City that kills thirty-five people and injures hundreds more.

1920:

Iraq is placed under British mandate.

1921:

Except for six counties in Protestant Northern Ireland, the British Parliament grants Ireland dominion status.

1922:

Militants in the Irish Sinn Fein party form the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

1923:

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) formed.

1923:

Adolf Hitler, leader of the German Nazi party, attempts to seize power. Hitler is arrested and sentenced to prison.

1924:

Lenin dies, to be succeeded by a triumvirate of leaders headed by Joseph Stalin.

1924:

From prison, Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf, in which he outlines the plan for conquest in eastern Europe, and the extermination of the Jews, that he will undertake as German leader less than a decade later.

1924:

BOI establishes an Identification Division after Congress authorized "the exchange of identification records with officers of the cities, counties, and states ..."

1926:

U.S. forces intervene in Nicaragua against leftist nationalist insurgency led by Augusto Cesar Sandino.

1927:

Chiang Kai-Shek defeats Communist Mao Zedong's "Autumn Harvest" rebellion.

1928:

Sixty-two nations sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact (including the U.S, Great Britain, Japan, and Italy) and renounce war as a means to solve international disputes.

1929:

Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes becomes Yugoslavia.

1929:

Scottish biochemist Alexander Fleming (1881–1955) discovers penicillin. He observes that the mold Penicillium notatum inhibits the growth of some bacteria. This is the first antibiotic, and it opens a new era of "wonder drugs" to combat infection and disease.

1929:

U.S. stock market crash in October ushers in Great Depression.

1930:

U.S. Treasury Department creates Bureau of Narcotics, which will remain the principal anti-drug agency of the federal government until the late 1960s.

1930:

Primitive anthrax vaccine developed.

1932:

The Bureau of Investigation starts the international exchange of fingerprint data with friendly foreign governments. Halted as war approached the program was not re-instituted until after World War II.

1932:

In response to the Lindbergh kidnapping case and other high profile cases Federal Kidnapping Act is passed to authorize BOI to investigate kidnappings perpetrated across state borders.

1932:

Iraq declared an independent state.

1933:

In January, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Party take power in Germany. By the end of the year, Hitler proclaims Third Reich.

1933:

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the President-elect of United States, escapes assassination attempt in Miami.

1935:

German Nazi party formalizes anti-Semitism with passage of Nuremberg laws.

1935:

In violation of the Versailles Treaty, Germany begins to rearm and reconstitutes the German Air Force (Luftwaffe).

1935:

Federal Bureau of Narcotics, forerunner of the modern Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), began a campaign that portrayed marijuana as a drug that led users to drug addiction, violence, and insanity. The government produced films such as Marihuana (1935), Reefer Madness (1936), and Assassin of Youth (1937).

1935:

Irish Protestants in Belfast riot against Catholics, provoking Catholic retaliation.

1935:

On July 1, the DOI officially became the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

1936:

Italy and Germany sign Axis Pact, to which Japan will become a signatory in 1940.

1936:

President Roosevelt asks FBI to report on the activities of Nazi and communist groups.

1938:

German Nazis attack Jews and Jewish businesses during night of violence termed Kristallnacht.

1938:

Hitler annexes Austria.

1939:

President Roosevelt assigns responsibility for investigating espionage, sabotage, and other subversive activities jointly to the FBI, the Military Intelligence Service of the War Department (MID), and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).

1940:

Germany launches a full-scale air war against England and extends persecution of the Jews into Poland, Romania, and the Netherlands.

1940:

Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as Britain's prime minister.

1940:

Ernest Chain and E.P. Abraham detail the inactivation of penicillin by a substance produced by Escherichia coli. This is the first bacterial compound known to produce resistance to an antibacterial agent.

1940:

Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico City by SMERSH (SMERrt SHpionam or "Death to Spies") agents (a KGB assassination team).

1940:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) participates in the growing Red Scare by conducting additional arrests of suspected Communist agents under powers granted by the 1940 Smith Act that permits the arrest of any individual inciting the overthrow of the government.

1940:

The FBI establishes a Special Intelligence Service (SIS).

1941:

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appoints William J. (Wild Bill) Donovan as "Coordinator of Information," a proto intelligence service.

1941:

On December 7, the Japanese attack the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In response, the United States entered World War II. The FBI is authorized to act against dangerous enemy aliens and to seize enemy aliens and contraband (e.g. short-wave radios, dynamite, weapons, and ammunition.).

1942:

German Nazi party makes Jewish extermination a systematic state policy, termed the "Final Solution."

1942:

Alcohol Tax Unit (ATU) formed and given responsibility for enforcing the Firearms Act.

1942:

The Manhattan Project is formed to secretly build the atomic bomb before the Germans.

1942:

Four German saboteurs come ashore from a U-boat on the beach near Amagansett, Long Island. Within the week, a second team of German saboteurs lands in Florida. Some saboteurs surrender, and within two weeks the FBI captured the others.

1944:

Assassination attempt on Hitler and several other high-ranking officials. Himmler suspects that the plot was the work of agents inside of the government, most especially the Abwehr.

1945:

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini killed by partisans on April 28, Adolf Hitler commits suicide April 30, and Germany surrenders to the Allies on May 7.

1945:

United States destroys the Japanese city of Hiroshima with a nuclear fission bomb based on uranium-235 on August 6. Three days later a plutonium-based bomb destroys the city of Nagasaki. Japan surrenders on August 14 and World War II ends. This is the first use of nuclear power as a weapon.

1946:

Winston Churchill states that an "iron curtain" has come down across Europe.

1947:

Three "pillars" of the containment policy are in place: Truman Doctrine (March 12), Marshall Plan ( June 5), National Security Act ( July 28). Supporting instruments include DOD, CIA, SAC, advance bases in Turkey and Libya. Stalin creates the Cominform, or Information Bureau of Communist parties in August, at the meeting in Poland of the Soviet, East European, French, and Italian communist parties. Andrei Zhadov reported to the conference that America and Russia were locked in a two-camp struggle for world domination. By September, the Freedom Train begins traveling the U.S. through 1948.

1947:

The National Security Act of 1947 establishes the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to replace the National Intelligence Authority and the Central Intelligence Group.

1947:

The United Nations proposes a division of what is now Israel almost equally between Israelis and Arabs. Arab countries reject this proposal.

1948:

The state of Israel is created and prompts Arab-Israel conflict.

1948:

Soon after Israel becomes a state in May, it is attacked by Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria. Though outnumbered, the Israelis defeat the Arab nations, and Israeli territory expands to encompass an area larger than that allotted in the original UN partition.

1949:

Victory of Mao Zedong in China forces Nationalist government to flee to Formosa, where it establishes the Republic of China. Meanwhile, the world's largest population falls under Communist rule as the People's Republic of China.

1949:

Russia announces that its first A-bomb was successfully tested on July 14.

1950–1999

1950:

McCarran Internal Security Act enacted, stating that all communist-front organizations must register with Attorney-General, communists can be prohibited from working in national defense, and provides for no entry into the U.S. of anyone who was a member of a totalitarian organization.

1950:

North Korea invades South Korea, igniting the Korean War. U.S. military troops sent to expel North Korean forces as part of a United Nations force.

1950:

President Harry S. Truman escapes assassination attempt unhurt as two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to shoot their way into Blair House in Washington. Officer Leslie Coffelt, White House Police, is shot and killed.

1950:

North Korean troops gain easy victories against Allied forces, but when General Douglas MacArthur launches a bold offensive at Inchon, he cuts the North Korean army in half. By Thanksgiving, he promises that U.S. troops will be home by Christmas, but on November 25, China enters the war, and drives the Allies back to the 38th parallel. Allied bombing ensures that this line remains the boundary between North and South Korea.

1951:

Mossad, Israel's chief intelligence collection, counterterrorism, and covert action agency, established on April 1.

1952:

First thermo-nuclear device is exploded successfully by the United States at the Eniwetok Atoll in the South Pacific. This hydrogen-fusion bomb (H bomb) is the first such bomb to work by nuclear fusion and is considerably more powerful than the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

1952:

McCarran-Walter Act is revised. The new immigration quota laws allow more Asians, but not "subversives." and gives the Attorney-General the right to deport immigrants that were communist even after U.S. citizenship is acquired.

1953:

Joseph Stalin dies and a political power struggle starts in the USSR.

1953:

James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick publish two landmark papers in the journal Nature. The papers are entitled Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid and Genetic implications of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid. Watson and Crick propose a double helical model for DNA and call attention to the genetic implications of their model. Their model is based, in part, on the x-ray crystallographic work of Rosalind Franklin and the biochemical work of Erwin Chargaff. Their model explains how the genetic material is transmitted.

1954:

A CIA-supported coup in Guatemala overthrows President Jacobo Arbenz.

1954:

French garrison at Dien Bien Phu falls to Viet Minh on May 7, and in July, French agree to leave Vietnam.

1954:

Atomic Energy Act is passed.

1954:

Communist Control Act is passed, briefly outlawing the Communist Party in the U.S.

1956:

Suez Crisis when Western powers, worried over Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser's close ties with the Soviet bloc, refuse assistance in building Aswan High Dam. In response, Nasser seizes the Suez Canal. Britain and France form an alliance with Israel, which invades on October 26.

1956:

Fidel Castro launches Cuban revolution against the Batista regime.

1956:

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, speaking about the West, states "History is on our side. We will bury you..."

1956:

Pakistan officially becomes an Islamic state.

1957:

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is formed as an autonomous United Nations body to verify that nuclear materials are not used in a prohibited manner.

1957:

The Soviet Union launches Sputnik.

1958:

U.S. Department of Defense establishes Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).

1958:

Iraqi monarchy is overthrown in a military coup.

1959:

Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba on January 1.

1960:

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev vows USSR will support "wars of national liberation ..."

1963:

Coup in Iraq led by the Arab Socialist Ba'th Party (ASBP).

1963:

On November 22, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinates President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.

1964:

North Vietnamese gunboats open fire on U.S. destroyer Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2. This results in the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, passed by U.S. Senate, which gives President Lyndon B. Johnson power to vastly escalate U.S. commitment in Vietnam.

1965:

American troops sent to the Dominican Republic to prevent a Communist takeover.

1965:

First U.S. combat troops are sent to Vietnam in March.

1965:

Anthrax vaccine adsorbed (AVA), is approved for use in the United States.

1965:

First bombings against Israel by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

1966:

France withdraws its troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). French President de Gaulle argues for a Europe free from both American and Soviet intervention.

1967:

FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) becomes operational.

1967:

In the Six-Day War, fought in the first week of June, Israel defeated a much larger Arab force, and gains control of the west bank of the Jordan River, which had been Jordanian territory.

1968:

During testing exercise of VX nerve agent, 6,400 sheep killed near Dugway, Utah.

1968:

Following passage of the Gun Control Act, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division of IRS becomes the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) Division.

1968:

James Earl Ray assassinates Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4. The FBI opened a special investigation based on the violation of Dr. King's civil rights so that federal jurisdiction in the matter could be established.

1968:

As a result of Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination on June 5, Congress authorized protection of major Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates and nominees.

1969:

On July 20, U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the moon.

1969:

By Executive Order, the United States renounces first-use of biological weapons and restricts future weapons research programs to issues concerning defensive responses (e.g., immunization, detection, etc.).

1969:

Microprocessor developed.

1969:

Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) established ARPANET, a forerunner to the Internet.

1969:

Muammar Qaddafi seizes power from King Idris in Libya on September 1.

1970:

Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), signed by 188 states, becomes operative.

1970:

The U.N. assigns the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the task of NPT monitoring and for developing nuclear safeguards.

1970:

In October, a group advocating the separation of Quebec from Canada kidnaps two government officials and murders one of them. The crisis causes the temporary imposition of martial law in the country and renews calls for a dedicated security agency.

1971:

Chinese defense minister Lin Pao attempts a failed coup against Mao Zedong and is killed in a plane crash. China is officially seated in the United Nations and launches its first space satellite.

1972:

U.S. Department of Defense directs Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) name change to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in March. DARPA is established as a separate defense agency under the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

1972:

Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) first signed. BWC prohibits the offensive weaponization of biological agents (e.g., anthrax spores). The BWC also prohibits the transformation of biological agents with established legitimate and sanctioned purposes into agents of a nature and quality that could be used to effectively induce illness or death.

1972:

Termed "Bloody Friday," on July 21, an IRA bomb attack killed eleven people and injured 130 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Ten days later, three additional IRA attacks in the village of Claudy left six dead.

1972:

After eleven Israeli athletes are murdered by Palestinian terrorists with the Black September organization at the Munich Olympics in September, Israel's Mossad establishes an action team, Wrath of God (WOG). Over the next two years, WOG tracks down and kills a dozen members of Black September.

1973:

Atmospheric Release Advisory Capability (ARAC) concept has its origins when the Department of Energy (DOE) seeks assistance from scientists at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in assessing potential and ongoing atmospheric hazards.

1973:

Concerns about the possible hazards posed by recombinant DNA technologies, especially work with tumor viruses, leads to the establishment of a meeting at Asilomar, California. The proceedings of this meeting are subsequently published by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as a book entitled Biohazards in Biological Research..

1973:

Oil embargo imposed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

1973:

Libya claims the Gulf of Sidra in defiance of international protocol.

1973:

Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War. Fourth Arab-Israeli war begins with a combined Egyptian and Syrian attack against Israel in October. When military efforts fail, the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) announces a cutback in oil production, raising gasoline prices and precipitating an energy crisis in the United States.

1974:

Members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) kidnap heiress Patricia Hearst on February 5. Hearst, allegedly brainwashed by the group, adopts the name "Tania" and participates in bank robberies. Most members, including leader Donald DeFreeze, are killed in a May 1974 shootout with authorities, and Hearst is captured by the FBI in September 1975. In January 2001, outgoing president William J. Clinton pardons her.

1974:

Cuba's National Liberation Directorate (DLN), which is responsible for fomenting Communist revolutions worldwide, becomes the America Department (DA) of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee. During the years that follow, DA will provide support to Communist insurgents and terrorists in numerous locales.

1974:

New era of congressional oversight in intelligence begins with passage of Hughes-Ryan Act amending the Foreign Service Act. Written in the wake of covert activities that helped bring down the Marxist regime of Salvador Allende in Chile, Hughes-Ryan requires the President to submit plans for covert actions to the relevant congressional committees.

1974:

British Prevention of Terrorism Act permits the arrest of suspected terrorists without a warrant and allows authorities to detain them for a week without bringing charges. While being interned, detainees are subject to a range of harsh practices that include "hooding"—being isolated and forced to wear a hood over their heads—noise bombardment, and sleep and food deprivation.

1975:

Puerto Rican nationalists bombed a Wall Street bar, killing four and injuring sixty; Two days later, the Weather Underground claims responsibility for an explosion in a bathroom at the U.S. Department of State in Washington.

1975:

U.S. Nuclear Emergency Support Team established to analyze and respond to cases involving nuclear threats.

1975:

On April 30, Saigon falls to North Vietnamese. In the following year, Vietnam is united under a communist government.

1975:

FBI Special Agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams are murdered while conducting an investigation on an Indian reservation in South Dakota. American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier was subsequently convicted of committing the murders.

1975:

President Gerald R. Ford escaped an assassination attempt September 5, in Sacramento, California, by Lynette Alice (Squeaky) Fromme, who pointed a gun, but did not fire. Ford again escaped an assassination attempt in San Francisco, California, on September 22, as Sara Jane Moore's shot was deflected.

1976:

Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai dies of cancer and Central Committee Chairman Mao Zedong dies.

1976:

On the night of July 3-4, members of Israel's Mossad conduct a raid on a French airliner, hijacked by Palestinian terrorists, in the Uganda city of Entebbe. The Israelis rescue all but four of the plane's ninety-seven passengers, losing a single officer, along with twenty Ugandan soldiers, in the process.

1977:

The United States vetoes a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a proposed total Israeli withdrawal from Arab areas.

1977:

The United States Ambassador Francis E. Melroy is killed in Beirut.

1977:

The last reported smallpox case recorded. Ultimately, the World Health Organization (WHO) declares the disease eradicated.

1978:

A bomb disguised as a package goes off at Northwestern University. This is the first of sixteen attacks, over the course of seventeen years, by an individual dubbed the "Unabomber" for his principal targets, universities and airlines.

1978:

Camp David meetings between President James E. Carter, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, offer hope for peace in Middle East.

1978:

Department of Energy initiates its Nuclear Threat Assessment Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in September.

1978:

Kidnapping of Italian Prime Minister on March 16: Premier Aldo Moro was seized by the Red Brigade and assassinated fifty-five days later.

1978:

The United States cancels development of the neutron bomb, which would theoretically destroy life but cause minimal physical destruction. The bomb was initially developed, in part, to ensure the maximal survival of European cultural treasures in the advent of nuclear war and thus enhance the credibility of U.S. use of the bomb against a Soviet aggression into Europe.

1979:

Sandinistas gain control of Nicaragua.

1979:

Saddam Hussein becomes president of Iraq.

1979:

The Iranian Shah flees Iran, and Shiite Muslim leader Ayatollah Khomeini assumes control of the fundamentalist Islamist revolution. The former Shah, suffering from cancer, seeks treatment and asylum in the United States. Islamist revolutionaries (mostly Iranian students) seize the American embassy and take sixty-six American diplomats hostage. Thirteen hostages were soon released, but the remaining fifty-three were held until their release on January 20, 1981. The hostage crisis consumes the remainder of U.S. President Jimmy Carter's term and critics claim that his failure to act decisively to secure the release of the hostages ultimately emboldens a generation of Islamist fundamentalist terrorism against the United States.

1979:

Less than a month following the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran the United States Embassy in Tripoli, Libya is attacked.

1979:

Less than a month following the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran the United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, is attacked, resulting in the killing of a U.S. Marine and another American.

1979:

Soviets invade Afghanistan on December 24.

1980:

CNN, the first twenty-four hours-a-day cable television news channel is launched. The Iranian hostage crisis and intense media coverage sparks "real-time" interest in American political, diplomatic, and security matters. For example, a nightly news program on ABC regarding the hostage crisis evolves into the modern news program, "Nightline."

1980:

After Lech Walesa leads a strike by shipyard workers, Poland's Solidarity Party becomes an independent labor union, the first in the sphere of Soviet influence.

1980:

More than five months after the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, the United States mounts an attempt to rescue the American hostages held in Iran, but fails when helicopters collide in the desert. The crash forces leaders to abort the mission. Eight Americans die and five are injured in the attempt.

1981:

AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is recognized and tracked as an epidemic.

1981:

Ronald Reagan inaugurated as President of the United States. Fearing Reagan's promise to renew and use American military strength to protect U.S. citizens and interests, Islamist militant revolutionaries in Iran release U.S. hostages held for 444 days under the Carter administration.

1981:

President Ronald Reagan wounded in assassination attempt by John W. Hinckley, Jr.; three others also wounded.

1981:

Israel launches air attacks to destroy an Iraqi nuclear research centre at Tuwaythah, Iraq (a city near Baghdad).

1981:

In August, two U.S. F-14 Tomcat fighters dispatched by the U.S. Sixth Fleet shoot down two Libyan Su-22 fighter-bombers over the Gulf of Sidra.

1981:

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat assassinated by Islamic militants on October 6.

1982:

Israel invades Lebanon and ousts PLO forces.

1982:

The FDA issues regulations for tamper-resistant packaging after seven people died in Chicago from ingesting Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide. The following year, the federal Anti-Tampering Act was passed, making it a crime to tamper with packaged consumer products.

1983:

February 13 attack on law enforcement officers in Medina, North Dakota, by the Sheriff's Posse Comitatus is the first significant incident involving an anti-government right-wing terrorist group in the United States.

1983:

Bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut on April 18: Sixty-three people, including the CIA's Middle East director, were killed, and 120 were injured in a 400-pound suicide truck-bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

1983:

Reagan terms the Soviet Union the "evil empire" and announces the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), a satellite-based defense system that would destroy incoming missiles and warheads in space.

1983:

The FBI Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) became fully operational.

1983:

Simultaneous suicide truck-bomb attacks were made on American and French compounds in Beirut, Lebanon. A 12,000-pound bomb destroyed the U.S. compound, killing 242 Americans, while 58 French troops were killed when a 400-pound device destroyed a French base. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

1984:

The Islamic Jihad kidnaps and later murders CIA station chief William Buckley in Beirut, Lebanon. Other U.S. citizens not connected to the U.S. Government were subsequently seized over a two year period.

1984:

Eighteen U.S. servicemen were killed, and 83 people were injured in a bomb attack on a restaurant near a U.S. Air Force Base in Spain. Responsibility was claimed by Hezbollah.

1984:

Sikh terrorists seized the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India. One hundred people die as Indian security forces retake the Sikh holy shrine.

1984:

Assassination of Prime Minister Gandhi on October 31. The Indian premier was shot to death by members of her security force.

1985:

Mikhail Gorbachev becomes general secretary of the Communist Party in the USSR. Gorbachev institutes economic reforms and policies such as "glasnost" (openness) to ease Cold War tensions.

1985:

Alec Jeffreys developed "genetic fingerprinting," a method of using DNA polymorphisms (unique sequences of DNA) to identify individuals. The method, which is subsequently used in paternity, immigration, and murder cases, is generally referred to as "DNA fingerprinting."

1985:

The Global Positioning System becomes operational.

1985:

Federal Radiological Preparedness Coordinating Committee, appointed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), completes the U.S. Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan, a blueprint for the federal response to a hazard involving nuclear radiation.

1985:

On June 14, a Trans-World Airlines (TWA) flight is hijacked en route to Rome from Athens by two Lebanese Hezbollah terrorists and forced to fly to Beirut. The eight crew members and 145 passengers were held for seventeen days, during which one American hostage, a U.S. Navy sailor, was murdered. After being flown twice to Algiers, the aircraft was returned to Beirut after Israel released 435 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners.

1985:

Achille Lauro Hijacking, October 7, 1985: Four Palestinian Liberation Front terrorists seize the Italian cruise liner in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, taking more than 700 hostages. One elderly U.S. passenger is murdered.

1986:

The space shuttle Challenger explodes during lift-off.

1986:

The Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine suffers explosions, severe radiation leakage, and causes an estimated 8,000 near-term deaths.

1986:

U.S. sales of arms to Iran during its war with Iraq, and the use of profits to fund Contra forces in Nicaragua fuels the Iran-Contra scandal.

1986:

DNA analysis conducted by the Scientific Intelligence Unit of England's Scotland Yard leads to the first conviction of a criminal—Colin Pitchfork, accused of rape and murder—on the basis of DNA evidence.

1986:

U.S. forces in the Gulf of Sidra sink two Libyan vessels on March 24, and on April 5, after a bomb goes off in a German discotheque. Based on intelligence that Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi orchestrated the attack in retaliation (a fact confirmed fifteen years later by Qaddafi himself ), America strikes back. On the night of April 15–16, U.S. forces launch a devastating 12-minute air strike on five strategic targets in Libya.

1986:

United States Congress passes Anti-Drug Abuse Act. This federal law includes mandatory minimum sentences for first time offenders with harsher penalties for possession of crack cocaine than powder cocaine.

1986:

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is enacted, defining federal computer crimes.

1986:

U.S. Defense Department establishes Chemical and Biological Defense Analysis Center.

1986:

U.S. Congress passes Goldwater-Nichols Act. Goldwater-Nichols, which represents the fourth major reorganization of the U.S. Department of Defense since World War II, calls on the White House to issue an annual National Security Strategy.

1987:

Congress passes the Computer Security Act, which makes unclassified computing systems the responsibility of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and not the NSA with regard to technology standards development.

1987:

Iraqi government uses nerve agents including sarin against Kurds in Northern Iraq.

1987:

The PLO's terrorist campaign against Israel became acute during its first Intifada (or "shaking off ") of Israeli authority in the Occupied Territories.

1987:

North Korean agents planted a bomb that destroys Korean Air Lines Flight 858.

1988:

U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. W. Higgins is kidnapped and murdered by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group while serving with the United Nations Truce Supervisory Organization (UNTSO) in Lebanon.

1988:

Iran-Iraq ceasefire begins (monitored by the UN Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group (UNIIMOG)).

1988:

Libyan intelligence operatives plant a bomb aboard Pan-Am 103 that crashes into the village at Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 aboard and eleven persons on the ground. Two Libyan intelligence officers are ultimately tried under Scottish law in The Hague. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was found guilty in January 2001.

1989:

After nine years of war, Soviet forces withdraw from Afghanistan.

1989:

British Parliament passes Security Service Act, which for the first time confers legal status on MI5.

1989:

The New People's Army (NPA) assassinated Col. James Rowe in Manila in April. The NPA also assassinated two U.S. government defense contractors in September.

1989:

The Berlin Wall is torn down, as many communist governments in Eastern Europe collapse.

1989:

In December, U.S. forces attack Panama to remove General Manuel Noriega in Operation Just Cause. The U.S. Army uses loud music as part of a psychological operation to dislodge Noriega from his refuge at the Papal embassy.

1989:

Nicolae Ceausescu, communist dictator of Romania, is overthrown and executed.

1990:

Yugoslavia overthrows communist party and ethnic tensions flourish.

1990:

U.S. Embassy bombed in Peru by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.

1990:

Iraq invades Kuwait. United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passes resolution 660 that calls for full Iraqi withdrawal. President Bush vows "This aggression will not stand."

1990:

U.S. military personnel receive vaccinations against anthrax prior to duty in the Persian Gulf War.

1990:

U.N. (via resolution 661) imposes economic sanctions on Iraq.

1990:

East and West Germany reunited.

1990:

Former Solidarity union leader Lech Walesa becomes president of post-communist Poland.

1990:

Iraq hangs Farzad Bazoft, an Iranian-born journalist with the London Observer newspaper, who Hussein accuses of spying on Iraqi military installations.

1991:

Launch of Operation Desert Storm against Iraq on January 17. The initial bombing campaign lasts approximately one hundred hours, and the entire military operation takes only forty-two days. The result is overwhelming Iraqi defeat.

1991:

Saddam Hussein orders Iraqi forces to brutally suppress Kurd and Shia rebellions in northern and southern Iraq.

1991:

IAEA's Iraq Action Team begins inspecting suspect sites in Iraq under U.N. Security Council mandate.

1991:

The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved.

1991:

The Baltic republics declare their independence and the USSR crumbles. A Commonwealth of Independent States takes the place of the former Soviet empire. Boris Yeltsin becomes president of Russia.

1993:

Czechoslovakia dissolves into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

1993:

The Maastricht Treaty officially forms the European Union.

1993:

World Trade Center Bombing, February 26, 1993: The World Trade Center in New York City was badly damaged when a car bomb planted by Islamic terrorists explodes in an underground garage. The bomb left six people dead and 1,000 injured. The men carrying out the attack were followers of Umar Abd al-Rahman, an Egyptian cleric who preached in the New York City area.

1993:

After a 51-day siege by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, a federal team assaults a compound held by the Branch Davidians, a religious sect charged with hoarding illegal weapons. The Branch Davidians set the buildings on fire, killing seventy-six people, including cult leader David Koresh.

1993:

On April 14, Iraqi intelligence agents attempt to assassinate former President George Bush during a visit to Kuwait. Two months later, the administration of William J. Clinton launches a cruise missile attack on the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

1993:

Explosive growth of Internet begins as a result of two factors: the full opening of the National Science Foundation's NSFNET, and the development of the first browsers, Mosaic (forerunner of Netscape Navigator) and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

1993:

On October 3, eighteen U.S. Rangers, participants in a United Nations peacekeeping force in Somalia, are killed in a firefight on the streets of Mogadishu.

1994:

Jewish right-wing extremist and U.S. citizen Baruch Goldstein kills Muslim worshippers at a mosque in West Bank town of Hebron, killing twenty-nine and wounding about 150.

1994:

North Korea withdraws its membership from IAEA over dispute regarding nuclear inspections.

1994:

Britain's Parliament passes Intelligence Services Act, which gives MI6 new statutory grounding. The Act defines the responsibilities and functions of MI6 and its chief, and sets in place a framework of government oversight for MI6 activities.

1994:

After Rwandan dictator, Major General Juvenal Habyarimana, dies in a plane crash on April 6, his Hutu supporters blame the Tutsi-controlled Rwandan Patriotic Front, and launch a campaign of genocide that resulted in more than 800,000 deaths over a period of a few weeks.

1994:

Russia invades Chechnya on October 11, launching a war that will last the better part of two years.

1995:

U.N. Security Council resolution 986 allows partial resumption of Iraqi oil exports, with the original intent to allow Iraq to sell oil to buy food and medicine (the "oil-for-food program"). Iraq subsequently diverts funds from sales to additional weapons purchases and the building of offices and places for the Hussein government. Malnutrition and improper medical care becomes widespread in Iraq.

1995:

After thwarting U.N. weapons inspectors, the government of Iraq admits to producing over 8,000 liters of concentrated anthrax as part of the nation's biological weapons program.

1995:

Twelve persons were killed, and 5,700 were injured in a Sarin nerve gas attack on a crowded subway station in the center of Tokyo, Japan. Aum Shinrikyu cult is blamed for the attacks.

1995:

A car bomb explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal office building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, collapsing walls and floors. 169 persons were killed, including nineteen children and one person who died in the rescue effort. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols are later convicted in the anti-government plot to avenge the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Tex., exactly two years earlier.

1995:

Concerned by revelations that agents of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Guatemala had committed human rights violations, CIA draws up guidelines prohibiting the agency from hiring agents with records of human-rights violations.

1995:

President William J. Clinton issues Presidential Decision Directive 39, "U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism," calling for a number of specific efforts to deter terrorism on America's shores, as well as that against Americans and allies abroad.

1995:

Radical Sunni Muslims set off a bomb at a national guard facility in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which killed five Americans.

1996:

An Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb detonates in London on February 9, killing two persons and wounding more than 100 others, including two U.S. citizens.

1996:

The Chemical and Biological Incident Response Force (CBIRF), a unit of the United States Marines devoted to countering chemical or biological threats at home and abroad, is activated.

1996:

A fuel truck carrying a bomb exploded outside the U.S. military's Khobar Towers housing facility in Dhahran on June 25, killing nineteen U.S. military personnel and wounding 515 persons, including 240 U.S. personnel. Thirteen Saudis and a Lebanese, all alleged members of Islamic militant group Hezbollah, are indicted on charges relating to the attack in June 2001.

1996:

Bombing at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park on July 27, during the Olympic Games, kills two people and injures 112. Eric Robert Rudolph is charged with the crime, but he evades capture for several years. Rudolph was later captured and sentenced in 2005.

1996:

Twenty-three members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) took several hundred people hostage at a party given at the Japanese Ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru on December 17. Among the hostages were several U.S. officials, foreign ambassadors and other diplomats, Peruvian Government officials, and Japanese businessmen. The group demanded the release of all MRTA members in prison and safe passage for them and the hostage takers. The terrorists released most of the hostages in December but held eighty-one Peruvians and Japanese citizens for several months.

1997:

The corrupt regime of Mobutu Sese Seko, a longtime U.S. ally in Zaire, is overthrown by rebel forces under the leadership of Laurent Kabila. Kabila will change the country's name back to Congo, but his regime will bring few democratic reforms, and he will be killed by his own bodyguards in 2001.

1997:

Tourist Killings in Egypt, November 17, 1997: Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya (IG) gunmen shot and killed fifty-eight tourists and four Egyptians and wounded twenty-six others at the Hatshepsut Temple in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor.

1998:

The Hebron Accord, designed to promote peace between Israel and Palestine, is undermined by both sides as terrorism breaks out and the building of new settlements defies non-expansionist agreements.

1998:

India and Pakistan conduct underground nuclear tests.

1998:

Controversy breaks out over the reported NSA "Echelon" project, which privacy groups describe as a worldwide surveillance network that eavesdrops on communications traffic and shares intelligence gathered by the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

1998:

International Atomic Energy Agency Iraq Action Team withdraws from Iraq because of a lack of "full and free access" to Iraqi sites.

1998:

Real IRA explodes a car bomb outside a store in Banbridge, North Ireland.

1998:

U.S. Embassy Bombings in East Africa, August 7, 1998: A bomb explodes at the rear entrance of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, killing twelve U.S. citizens, thirty-two Foreign Service Nationals (FSNs), and 247 Kenyan citizens. About 5,000 Kenyans, six U.S. citizens, and thirteen FSNs were injured. The U.S. embassy building sustained extensive structural damage. Almost simultaneously, a bomb detonates outside the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing seven FSNs and three Tanzanian citizens, and injuring one U.S. citizen and seventy-six Tanzanians. The explosion caused major structural damage to the U.S. embassy facility. The U.S. Government holds Osama Bin Laden responsible.

1998:

Formation, in October, of the U.S. National Domestic Preparedness Office as the coordination center for all federal efforts in response to weapons of mass destruction.

1998:

Iraq expels U.N. weapons inspectors on October 31.

1998:

In December, 1998 following Iraq's expulsion of U.N. weapons inspectors, the U.S. and U.K. launch Operation Desert Fox to attempt to destroy Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs.

1999:

Vladimir Putin becomes Prime Minister of Russia.

1999:

Beginning March 24, NATO forces conduct a 78-day campaign of air strikes against Yugoslavia. Operation Allied Force brings an end to Serb "ethnic cleansing" in the Albanian enclave of Kosovo, and helps to break the hold of Slobodan Milosevic on the country as a whole.

1999:

Melissa virus (actually a form of malicious data wedded to a particular type of virus program, a macro virus) spreads through the e-mail systems of the world on March 26, causing $80 million worth of damage, primarily in the form of lost productivity resulting from the shutdown of overloaded mailboxes.

1999:

Fugitives Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah were surrendered to Dutch authorities on April 5 for trial before a Scottish court for charges in connection with the 1998 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland.

1999:

Osama Bin Laden was added to the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list in June, in connection with the U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa.

1999:

FBI personnel traveled to Kosovo on June 23 to assist in the collection of evidence and the examination of forensic materials in support of the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic and others before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

1999:

As the year 2000 approaches, the world prepares itself for the possible deleterious effects of a computer shortcut (a protocol developed when memory was scarce) that used only the last two digits of a year to indicate the year. Termed the Y2K glitch or problem, fears approach near hysteria as people and governments prepare for computers to malfunction and adversely effect critical infrastructure. Adequate preparation, considerable investment in programming solutions, and monitoring turn the dawn of 2000 into a grand worldwide party but a non-event with regard to Y2K fears. Minimal disruptions are reported.

2000–

2000:

Mokhtar Haouari and Abdel Ghani Meskini were charged with collaborating with Ahmed Ressam and others in a wide-ranging terrorist conspiracy to bomb American sites during the January 1, 2000, millennium celebrations. The FBI/New York Police Department Joint Terrorist Task Force, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, and Canada's Department of Justice assisted in the investigation.

2000:

Asbat al-Ansar carries out a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the Russian Embassy in Beirut in January 2000.

2000:

The Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) an Islamic extremist group based in Pakistan is formed by Masood Azhar upon his release from prison in India in early 2000.

2000:

October 12, terrorist bombing of U.S.S. Cole kills seventeen of its crew and wounds thirty-nine others. Two suicide bombers, ultimately linked to al-Qaeda, pulled alongside the vessel near the port in Aden, Yemen, and detonated explosives near the Cole's hull.

2000:

The PLO's terrorist campaign against Israel again intensifies with start of second Intifada.

2000:

Former Senator Danforth, conducting an independent review of FBI actions in the 1993 FBI assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, released his final report exonerating the FBI of wrongdoing. The Government Operations Committee reaches a similar conclusion.

2001:

The complete draft sequence of the human genome is published in February. The public sequence data is published in the British journal Nature and the Celera sequence is published in the American journal Science. Increased knowledge of the human genome allows greater specificity in pharmacological research and drug interaction studies.

2001:

In May, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi admits to a German newspaper that Libya was behind a Berlin discotheque bombing in 1986 that killed a U.S. serviceman and a Turkish civilian, and injured some two hundred others. At a trial in November, four defendants are convicted for roles in the bombing.

2001:

Hamas claims responsibility for the bombing of a popular Israeli nightclub that causes more than 140 casualties.

2001:

A U.S. grand jury indicts fourteen Hezbollah members on June 21 for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

2001:

Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the rebels in the Afghanistan Northern Alliance, widely regarded as the most popular opposition figure to the then ruling Taliban (the regime that provided asylum to al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama Bin Laden) is assassinated on September 9.

2001:

September 11, Islamist terrorists mount a coordinated terrorist attack on New York and Washington. The World Trade Center Towers are destroyed, killing nearly 3,000 people. In Washington, a plane slams into the Pentagon, but passengers aboard another hijacked airliner, aware of the other terrorist attacks, fight back. During the struggle for the aircraft, it crashes into a Pennsylvania field, thwarting the terrorist's plans to crash the plane into either the U.S. Capital or White House.

2001:

Letters containing a powdered form of Bacillus anthracis, the bacteria that causes anthrax, are mailed by an unknown terrorist or terrorist group (foreign or domestic) to government representatives, members of the news media, and others in the United States. More than twenty cases and five deaths are eventually attributed to the terrorist attack.

2001:

On October 7, United States launches Operation Enduring Freedom against the al-Qaeda terror network and Afghanistan's Taliban regime.

2001:

Natural and manmade caves are used by Al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.

2001:

In conjunction with the U.S. Post Office, the FBI on October 18 offered a reward of $1,000,000 for information leading to the arrest of the person who mailed letters contaminated with Anthrax in October to media organizations and congressional offices. A further anthrax contaminated letter was postmarked to a U.S. senator on October 8, resulting in closure of the Hart Senate building and other government offices and postal facilities.

2001:

On October 26, 2001, President George W. Bush signs the Patriot Act into law, giving the FBI and CIA broader investigatory powers and allowing them to share confidential information about suspected terrorists with one another. Under the act, both agencies can conduct residential searches without a warrant and without the presence of the suspect and allows immediate seizure of personal records. The provisions are not limited to investigating suspected terrorists, but may be used in any criminal investigation related to terrorism. The Patriot Act also grants the FBI and CIA greater latitude in using computer tracking devices such as the Carnivore (DCS1000) to gain access to Internet and phone records.

2001:

On November 19, President George W. Bush signs into law the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA), which creates the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and authorizes TSA to direct a team of air marshals and federal airport security screeners.

2001:

United Kingdom passes a new counter-terrorist bill in December, 2001, the Anti-Terrorism, Crime, and Security Act. The act allows British authorities to detain suspected terrorists for up to six months before reviewing their cases and for additional six-month periods after that. As in the United States, civil liberty advocate groups in the United Kingdom criticize the new law for potentially infringing upon a basic civil liberty, specifically the right to avoid unlawful detention and gain access to a speedy trial.

2001:

The Chemical and Biological Incident Response Force (CBIRF) sends a 100-member initial response team into the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington on December 2 alongside Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) specialists to detect and remove anthrax. A similar mission was undertaken at the Longworth House Office Building in October, during which time samples were collected from more than 200 office spaces.

2001:

FBI Director Mueller orders the reorganization of FBI operations on December 3 to respond to a revised agency mission that emphasizes terrorism prevention, internal accountability, and strengthens partnerships with domestic and international law enforcement.

2001:

Enough closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) are installed in public places in Britain that, on an average day in any large British city, security experts calculate that a person will have over 300 opportunities to be captured on CCTV during the course of normal daily activities.

2002:

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, by the first few months of 2002, the United States Government dramatically increases funding to stockpile drugs and other agents that could be used to counter a bioterrorism attack.

2002:

An explosives-laden boat rammed the French oil tanker Limburg off the coast of Yemen, killing one member of the tanker's crew, tearing a hole in the vessel, and spilling 90,000 barrels of oil. U.S. experts believe that the attack was linked to al-Qaeda.

2002:

Industrialized nations pledge $10 billion to help Russia secure Soviet era nuclear weapons and materials.

2002:

The planned destruction of stocks of smallpox causing Variola virus at the two remaining depositories in the U.S. and Russia is delayed over fears that large scale production of vaccine might be needed in the event of a bioterrorist action.

2002:

More than 1,300 FBI personnel, along with representatives of other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies ensure safety at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. Preparations for the games had begun in May 1998 and included multiple training exercises involving weapons of mass destruction scenarios.

2002:

Scientists at Russia's DS Likhachev Scientific Research Institute for Cultural Heritage and Environmental Protection successfully breed a new kind of highly efficient explosives sniffer dog. The new breed is a cross between a wild jackal and a Russian Husky.

2002:

GAO reports that thirteen of the hijackers involved in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. had not been interviewed by U.S. consular officials prior to the granting of visas.

2002:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiates the Biosensor Technologies program in 2002 to develop fast, sensitive, automatic technologies for the detection and identification of biological warfare agents.

2002:

Russian and NATO foreign ministers reach final agreement in May on the establishment of the NATO-Russia Council, in which Russia and the nineteen NATO countries will have an equal role in decision-making on counter terrorism policy and other security threats.

2002:

U.S. President George Bush calls upon United Nations to confront the Iraqi threat and usurp potential Iraqi transfer of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups (some of which operate within Iraq).

2002:

London police arrest seven men in connection with Ricin manufacture.

2002:

On November 26, President George W. Bush signs into law the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. Intended to cover the private sector in the event of terrorist attacks such as those that occurred on September 11, 2001.

2002:

Congress passes and President George W. Bush signs the "Homeland Security Act of 2002" into law creating the Department of Homeland Security.

2002:

In November, a CIA-operated Predator drone fires a missile that killed Bin Laden's top lieutenant in Yemen, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, and five other al-Qaeda suspects in Yemen.

2002:

A group of Swiss researchers at the Lausanne-based Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence (IDIAP), claimed they were 95 percent certain that a tape purported to contain a message from Osama Bin Laden and played on Arabic television network Al-Jazeera was a fake. U.S. officials continued to assert that the tape was probably genuine. Investigators claim that the poor tape quality defeats sophisticated efforts using aural spectrogram machines that rely on biometric algorithms to analyze breath patterns, syllable emphasis, frequency of speech, rate of speech, and other factors. Over the next several months, additional tapes are released with experts generally agreeing only that the voice alleged to be that of Bin Laden could be genuine. The authenticity of the tapes was critical to determine if the al-Qaeda leader had survived the U.S. war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

2002:

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri—allegeded to be leader of al-Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf is captured. Nashiri, also known as Abu Asim al-Makki, is suspected of masterminding the October 2000 attack on the American warship U.S.S. Cole.

2002:

Anas al-Liby, one of the FBI's list of most-wanted, is captured in Afghanistan. Al-Liby was allegedly linked by to the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

2002:

Ramzi Binalshibh allegedly one of the most senior al-Qaeda members, is arrested in Pakistan.

2002:

Trial of Mounir Al-Motassadek begins in Germany. al-Motassadek, a Moroccan, is the first man to stand trial over the September 11 terrorist attacks and is charged with being an accessory to more than 3,000 murders in New York and Washington, and of belonging to an al-Qaeda cell in Hamburg. Motassadek claimed he knew the hijackers, but only socially but is convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison for being a co-conspirator. Al-Motassadek's conviction related to involvement in the September 11 terrorist attacks is ultimately overturned but his conviction for belonging to a terrorist cell stands.

2002:

Zacarias Moussaoui, a 34-year-old French citizen of Moroccan origin, is charged with six counts of conspiracy and faces a possible death sentence for alleged involvement in the September 11, attacks on New York and Washington. Moussaoui is referred to as the "20th hijacker" who was unable to participate in the mission because he was already under arrest. Moussaoui has denied involvement in the attacks but allegedly admitted to being a member of the al-Qaeda network.

2002:

In December, 2002, North Korea expels IAEA inspectors, removes surveillance equipment from nuclear facilities, and announces an intent to make plants operational.

2002:

In violation of a 1994 agreement with the U.S., North Korea claims to have a secret nuclear weapons program.

2002:

Jemaah Islamiah organisation bombing of nightclub in Kuta, Bali leaves more than two hundred people dead—including many Australian tourists. In March 2005, JI leader Abu Bakar Bashir is found guilty of conspiracy in connection with the attacks in Bali.

2003:

Office of Homeland Security becomes Department of Homeland Security on January 24.

2003:

President George W. Bush announces formation of Project BioShield during his 2003 State of the Union Address.

2003:

North Korea pulls out of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

2003:

United States Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presents to the United Nations Security Council evidence of Iraq's continued development of prohibited biological weapons. In 2005, Powell will state that he was subsequently embarrassed by his presentation and upset that intelligence officials who knew the information was not reliable never informed him.

2003:

NATO's internal divisions are highlighted as France, Germany, and Belgium temporarily block U.S. moves to offer military support to Turkey in the event of war in Iraq.

2003:

Ten suspected terrorists mysteriously vanished from a high-security prison in Yemen. Among the escapees are two top suspects in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

2003:

Richard Reid, the failed "shoe bomber" who attempted a suicide bombing of an American Airlines Paris-to-Miami flight in December 2001, plead guilty on all eight charges against him and declared himself a follower of Osama Bin Laden. Reid is sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

2003:

U.S. government officials claim that the capture of top al-Qaeda lieutenant Khalid Sheik Mohammed, allegedly al-Qaeda's chief operations planner also yields valuable documents and computer drives outlining al-Qaeda operations.

2003:

Virtually all agencies scheduled for transfer to the new Department of Homeland Security are officially moved in a March 1 ceremony attended by President George W. Bush.

2003:

Space shuttle Columbia is destroyed upon reentry.

2003:

Carbon-graphite coils capable of generating an electromagnetic pulse or otherwise disabling electronics are used in U.S.-led raids on Baghdad, Iraq.

2003:

United States intelligence sources indicate that at least seventeen nations around the globe have offensive biological weapons programs.

2003:

On March 17 U.S. President George W Bush gives Saddam Hussein and his sons forty-eight hours to leave Iraq or face war.

2003:

On March 20, American missiles hit "targets of opportunity" in Baghdad to mark the start of the war to oust Saddam Hussein. Intelligence sources on the ground in Iraq indicate that Hussein and other elements of the Iraqi leadership are meeting in a bunker in Baghdad. In less than forty-five minutes, a U.S. B-2 stealth bomber armed with "bunker-buster" munitions attempts to eliminate the Iraqi leadership. For several weeks the fate of Hussein is debated, with Iraqi television showing images of Hussein that do not verify his survival. Within days, U.S. and British ground troops enter Iraq from the south. Intelligence data will also drive a similar attack on potential Iraqi leadership targets as U.S. troops approach Baghdad.

2003:

On April 9. U.S. forces advance into central Baghdad. Saddam Hussein government is toppled. With the assistance of U.S. troops, Iraqis celebrating liberation pull down a large statue of Saddam Hussein located in central Baghdad.

2003:

Widespread looting in Iraqi threatens general security and plunders cultural treasures.

2003:

PLF leader Abu Abbas, found guilty of the murder of an elderly American during the 1985 terrorist hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro is discovered and arrested in Baghdad following Operation Iraqi Freedom.

2003:

Al-Qaeda blamed for May bombings of United States housing compounds in Saudi Arabia that kill twenty-six and injure 160.

2003:

Chechnya-based suicide bombers attack train in southern Russia and kill forty-six people.

2003:

Chechnya-based terrorists blamed for blast in the center of Moscow that kills six people and wounds a dozen more.

2003:

Chechnya-based terrorists blamed for blasts at Moscow rock concert that kill fifteen people.

2003:

Chechnya-based terrorists blamed for bombing of passenger train near Kislovodsk in Russia that kills seven people and injures nearly one hundred.

2003:

Chechnya-based terrorists blamed for explosion at the Russian hospital in Mozdok that kills at more than fifty people.

2003:

FARC rebels are blamed for car bomb that kills thirty-six and injures 150 in Bogot·, Colombia.

2003:

Hotel Bombing in Baghdad, Iraq, kills twenty-two people (including the U.N. representative Sergio Vieira de Mello).

2003:

Palestinian suicide bomber kills twenty-one and wounds fifty-one by bombing Haifa restaurant (Maxim restaurant massacre).

2003:

Truck bombs in Turkey damage two synagogues, the British Consulate, and a bank in Istanbul. More than fifty killed and seven hundred wounded in the attacks.

2004:

Abu Sayyaf group bombs ferry in Philippines, killing more than one hundred people.

2004:

Australian embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia bombed.

2004:

Bombing of commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, kills 191 people and injures more than 1,500. The attacks—initially blamed on ETA—are ultimately attributed to al-Qaeda.

2004:

Chechnya-based suicide bombers attack Russian airplanes and kill ninety people.

2004:

Chechnya-based Terrorists seize Beslan school near North Ossetia, Russia. More than three hundred hostages, including children, die during attack by Russian forces to liberate the hostages.

2004:

Chechnya-based suicide bomber, kills ten people and injures thirty-three in Moscow subway entrance bombing.

2004:

More than one hundred Kurds are killed in two suicide bombings near Arbil, Iraq.

2004:

Moscow Metro bombing that kills forty-one is attributed to Chechnya-based terrorists.

2004:

Suicide bombings at Shia holy sites in Iraq kill more than 175 people and injure at least five hundred additional pilgrims.

2005:

Islamic Jihad conducts suicide bombing in Netanya, Israel, that kills five people.

2005:

Suicide bomber in the predominantly Shiite town of Musayyib in Iraq, destroyed oil tanks and kills nearly one hundred people.

2005:

Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and twenty others in Beirut killed by car bombs.

2005:

More than one hundred Iraqis killed by a suicide car bomb outside a clinic south of Baghdad.

2005:

Suicide bomber in Cairo market, kills three foreign tourists.

2005:

Suicide bombers sympathetic to al-Qaeda mount coordinated attack on London Underground and bus transport, destroying one double-decker bus and damaging three London Underground trains. More than fifty people killed and more than seven hundred injured.

2005:

Explosives fail to detonate during attempted follow-up attacks on London Underground.

2005:

Car bombs explode at tourist sites in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, more than eighty persons killed.

2005:

Jewish terrorist wearing the uniform of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) kills four Arab Israelis on a bus in Shfaram, Israel.